Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Kellie Carter Jackson is a 19th century historian in the Department of History at Hunter College, CUNY. Carter Jackson's research focuses on violence as a political discourse, slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World, historical film, and black women’s history.

Her manuscript, Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, examines the political and social tensions preceding the American Civil War and the condition and that led some black abolitionists to believe that slavery might only be abolished by violent force. Before coming to Hunter College, Carter Jackson was a Harvard College Fellow in the Department of African & African American Studies at Harvard University. She has published an essay,"Violence and Political History," in the American Historical Association's Perspectives on History magazine. Carter Jackson's chapter, " 'At the Risk of Our Own Lives': Violence and the Fugitive Slave Law in Pennsylvania" was published in the edited collection, The Civil War in Pennsylvania: The African American Experience(2013). She has also served as the Guest Editor for The National Journal of Urban Education & Practice's special issue on "Race and Urban Space: A Discourse on Power, Struggle, and Change" (Summer 2012). She is also a contributor Quartz.com (owned by the Atlantic media company), Cognoscenti,WBUR's ideas and opinion page (Boston's NPR news station) and The Conversation, an online magazine in Australia which features the latest ideas and research. Her article, “Is Viola Davis in it?: Black Women Actors and the Single Stories of Historical Film” was published in Transition Magazine, Issue 114.

Carter Jackson is currently co-editing a book with Erica L. Ball on Reconsidering Roots: Observations on the 40th Anniversary of a TV Mini-Series that changed the Way We Understood American Slavery.

Carter Jackson was a 2010-2011 Gilder Lehrman Fellow and earned her Ph.D in history from Columbia University as a Richard Hofstadter Faculty Fellow, working closely with advisor and historian Eric Foner. During her time at Columbia, she was a recipient of the George E. Haynes Fellowship Award, which honors graduate students achieving academic excellence and the John & Louise Jay Scholarship. Carter Jackson graduated cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in print journalism from the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University. Carter Jackson was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and a National Visionary Leadership Project Fellow, headed by Dr. Camille Cosby and Rene Poussaint. As a fellow, her interviews of NVLP visionaries were archived at the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum of African American Life and Culture.

Carter Jackson has presented research at numerous national and international conferences such as the University of Cambridge, the Ubuntu Kraal in Johannesburg, South Africa, Yale University, Boston University, the American Historical Association (AHA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the American Studies Association (ASA), and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). She has served as a keynote speaker on an array of lectures and discussions as well. Carter Jackson sat on the board for Freedom Rising: 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and African American Military Service Conference held at Harvard University in May of 2013. For the conference, Carter Jackson and Natalie Leger co-wrote the official program’s historical context entitled, “Roots of Liberty: Understanding the Haitian Revolution and its Impact” which was also translated into Haitian Kreyòl. In conjunction with the conference, Carter Jackson was a fellow for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities where she worked as a historical consultant for Roots of Liberty, a play with the theatrical contributions of Danny Glover and Edwidge Danticat.

Carter Jackson has taught at classes at Harvard University. Gonzaga University, Columbia University, Barnard College, and New York University. She also speaks in both academic and non-academic settings, on a wide variety of topics from African American history, Violence as a Political Discourse, American Slavery and Freedom, and Historical Film & TV. Carter Jackson is a historian, educator, and activist. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.